El Salvador’s Bukele says ‘preposterous’ to suggest he return Abrego Garcia to U.S.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said on Monday that he was not inclined to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States.

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who had lived in Maryland for about 15 years, was deported to El Salvador despite being granted protections by an U.S. immigration judge. He is in custody in Bukele’s mega prison known as CECOT. The Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return.

During Bukele’s Oval Office visit on Monday, Trump and his team said it was up to the Salvadoran government to decide whether to return him. Bukele said he would not do that.

“The question is preposterous: how can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele said.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller speaks during an Oval Office meeting with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador as Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Attorney General Pam Bondi look on.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said the matter was up to Bukele. “He’s a citizen of El Salvador, so it’s very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador, how to handle their own citizens,” Miller said.

Rubio emphasized that no court in the United States had the right to conduct foreign policy.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said that Abrego Garcia was not in the United States legally and downplayed the issue with his deportation as a “paperwork” issue. “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us,” Bondi said in the Oval Office meeting.

She said the only obligation the U.S. had to “facilitate” his return was to provide a plane.